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Well, that seemed to go quite well. Here's the plane iron: And here's the rule from the square: Took about an hour in the solution and then two minutes with a brush. Will do some more trials tomorrow.

Had a bit of a play in the lab today and things didn't turn out too bad: Not a before and after, but the one on the right was a bit worse than the one on the left before a couple of hours in... Haven't had a chance to tweak the formulation, just whacked it together. Have just put these in...

Been doing a bit of reading around this subject (having purchased plenty of rusty tools recently), looks like some rust removers contain chelating agents. These are chemicals that bind to the iron in the rust and form a stable molecule. Will try to knock something up in the lab tomorrow with...

Best to use weak acids (organic acids like acetic or citric) rather than strong acids (hydrochloric or sulphuric etc). Weak acids will eat your metal slower than the strong acids. Had some fun dropping old pennies into conc. nitric the other day at school...ended up with lots of brown smoke and...

The active component in Nitromors was a volatile solvent (hence the recommendation to cover to prevent evaporation). The active components of Coro-dip don't look to be volatile, so should be less necessary, but I guess it will stop it drying out.

Will give the vice a clean and then attach it to something solid and give it a test drive. It feels like a solid lump of iron, so I hope all is hunky dory. If not, I probably paid less than the scrap value of the iron for it.

The plaster acts as an extender for the coating. It prevents the film from shrinking so much when it dries so that the holes in the grain stay filled when the coating is dry. Mike

Thanks Andy, that explains things. I haven't attached it to a bench yet, so I guess that's why it's not engaging. Sounds like you need a bit of momentum in turning the handle. Should be a real upgrade on my current tiny Chinese vice. I'll probably need to reinforce my bench though! Mike

Says it's "Blend of partially neutralised organic salts and natural acids" on the website, so probably doing a similar thing to acetic or citric acid with a few knobs and whistles thrown in.

Just acquired an old Woden vice (Ideal 189/2): It's a great big lump of iron and I reckon it's got real potential, but there's a problem with the quick release. It won't tighten. I'm not familiar with this type of QR, but it looks like the sprung bar is in the wrong position and doesn't hold...

Been going down the villa since I was 4 (on the old witton end, just in front of the bovril kiosk). That was in the old third division. Dad's been going down since just after WWII. Can't remember a more depressing time to follow them, even under Billy McNeill.

Who would have thought Spike Milligan would know so much about sharpening knives!

Have to be an insomniac to follow the villa recently! 1) always last on MOTD 2) football has been zzzzzzzzzzz Owen??? David...Michael...Oyston!?

I'm always back firing,

Double post

This is basically the electrolysis of water converting H2O to H2 and O2. The process requires DC electric current and water. there are a few problems with using this process to power a car, firstly it requires electricity to produce the fuel, secondly the gas takes a long time to produce...

Great stuff, I teach in a secondary school and I see great work from students every day. We need more of this to counteract the knee jerk "country's going to the dogs" brigade we often see around here.

Just fantastic. All of the bits of that lathe have little spots of blood on them. No wonder he doesn't shave! Love this sort of low tech DIY stuff.

RealPlayer is pretty good for this. Just hover your cursor over. The video and you get a button pop up asking if you want to download the video. As a teacher, this is the most important tool in my cabinet! http://uk.real.com/realplayer

I just bought an EpsonSX535W for 65 quid from PC World. Early days, but it's pretty good. Particularly like the fact that I can print on both sides of a piece of paper automatically.